Windows Phone 7 UI on video – looks usable, flat

With any new UI design there’s a learning curve – like, how are those “hubs” on Windows Phone 7 supposed to work? Once you see it on video things get a lot clearer. And if you were worried how the newfangled OS will handle your corporate email – don’t, it’ll do it with smoothly animated ease…

This first video shows off, the Office Hub – it’s where you can access all your documents from a simple to use interface.

Office is now part of the OS and not a set of separate preloaded apps. The animations on Windows Phone 7 look pretty cool too, especially the “page flip” animation that breaks up the page into several segments and flips them separately.

I think the UI on Windows Phone 7 look a little flat though – especially the QWERTY, it’s barely recognizable as a separate element, it looks more like someone typed “q w e r t y” on the page.

Anyway, here’s the second video – it shows off the email and the organizer:

Shaded faux-3D buttons haven’t been cool in a while (say 10-15 years), but Windows Phone 7 is at the other extreme – it looks as flat as a sheet of paper. Sure, its simplicity is alluring, but until I play around with it, I can’t say if the lack of buttons is a good thing or a bad thing.